I imagine that I am still living in NYC but have no place to stay, so I will sleep in hotel rooms as long as I can afford it. I know of a hotel in Queens that's relatively cheap, but my intention to head in that direction is deflected by someone (a total stranger?) who tells me that as long as I'm getting involved with hotels there's one in Midtown Manhattan I simply must visit. This person tells me that there are events that occur on the first floor or the basement levels that are very dramatic and are of astonishing phsyical beauty. However, if I walk into the hotel, it is better that I not seek to view the events directly; rather I should enter one of the rooms on the floors above--each room has a shaft with an open top attached to one of its walls, rising only to the height of an average human, and you can peer down the shaft to the hotel's bottom, though obviously you could also throw down small objects.

I manage to sneak into the hotel and enter an un-occupied room. Despite the fact that the hotel is so expensive for those who actually pay, the room looks comfortable but not particularly fancy. When I enter it is evening, and I want to take a nap; somehow the matter of seeing the once-in-a-lifetime spectacles below is not on my mind at this time, nor at any later time in the dream. I do nap for a short time, and then observe my suitcase on a table, with some of the clothes that were within it removed and placed neatly beside it. However, I do not remember opening the suitcase and taking out any of the clothes.

I discover that I am still tired, and decide to take another little nap. When I wake up it morning. I am quite panicked, because somehow I assume that with the sun up it will be harder to walk out of the hotel with no questions asked than it would have been in the middle of the night. I gaze wistfully out of the window of my fourth or fifth story room, pondering the possiblity that when I take the elevator down to the ground level I could bypass the front desk and find a back door that I could walk through inconspiciously. I gaze into a round mirror that stands upon another table in the room, and everything about my face is unsurprising except that what heretofore had been the whites of my eyes were now shiny silver.